The Watercolourist (11 page)

Some days are simply not long enough for all the life that runs through them; the climate is perfect, shifting miraculously from cool to warm, from shade to sunshine and back
again to the shade. For the days are not always clear – at times the clouds pass rapidly overhead and stain the ground below. On those days, every natural thing seems to have just been born
and at the same time seems to be a hundred years old, every natural thing looks back at you in challenge: you inconsequential crumb, you miserable, minuscule mortal. You understand that everything
of significance has already happened and will continue to happen long after you’re gone. And instead of feeling frustrated, you feel a profound happiness because you realize that this is how
it is supposed to be, it’s the course of non-human life, things that need to be contemplated but not understood, for this kind of comprehension is simply too vast for brains the size of a
fist. Whatever you do on those days, you come away feeling both satisfied and incomplete: nothing will ever compare with so much glory and yet you have wasted all this time on banalities. You
should have just sat still and reflected on what was happening: both everything and nothing. That would have been better. And instead you busied yourself like an ant, filling your hours with
mindless tasks: eating, sleeping, talking. And when the day disappears into the velvet blue there’s nothing left to do but pray that tomorrow will be identical, but it won’t be, because
perfect days are always different, one from the next; no one can ever recall two being alike.

Some days begin badly for Bianca but get better as the dissatisfaction, anger and capriciousness that force her to hate everyone – first and foremost herself – melt
like frost in the sunlight. It takes so little, sometimes just an excuse, to laugh or even smile. Since she cannot fly as she might wish, she chooses to walk very slowly, thankful for her two
feet.

She thinks of the time she went to the kitchen to ask for some clean rags and found Donna Clara seated there on a high altar, like a gargantuan queen, intent on teaching the cook something new.
She read recipes out loud from Agnoletti’s
Nuova cucina economica
, some in perfect Italian and other parts translated into dialect, naming ingredients, directions and measurements.
The cook wanted to know what was wrong with her gnocchi, and why they weren’t good enough any more.

‘Listen,’ Donna Clara said. ‘Here it says to add two eggs to the mixture to make it more compact, do you understand? Do you usually do that? No? Well then, don’t complain
if your gnocchi are too soft.’

They are a strange family: at times snobbish and then practical and down to earth. Sometimes they mix with the peasants and moments later they give off airs of superiority. First they laugh and
then they are serious. Even Donna Clara’s ailments have something comical about them.

‘I’ve got an awful headache. It’s as if a beast with large hands were squeezing the back of my head . . .’; ‘Today I have a stomach ache. It’s as if a beast
with large hands were taking hold of my intestines and shaking them . . .’; ‘If you only knew what a backache I have today. It’s as if a beast with large hands were punching me
here, here and over here . . .’

Old Pina, maid and Cerberus to Donna Clara, is the only one who pays any attention to her complaints. She cocks her white head to the side like a perplexed chicken and spews out suggestions of
herbal remedies in no particular order: aniseed for the belly; bittersweet to rid her of phlegm; fava plants, but just a little, for her headache. The other maids listen, containing their smiles
with bowed heads. And when Donna Clara drags herself to the living room awaiting the treatment most suited to this day’s ailment, the giggling begins.

‘Be careful the beast doesn’t put his big hands up your skirt! Because that’ll definitely make you feel better.’

‘But how big is he?’ snickers another maid.

‘This big!’

Bianca doesn’t engage with them but can easily imagine the vulgar gestures that accompany the exchange. She pictures a mythological animal, some sort of Minotaur, slipping into bed with
Donna Clara and massaging her white shoulders with his giant hands in a prelude to providing her with the kinds of pleasures that are now only memories for the lady of the house. Bianca wonders
about those memories. She herself does not yet possess any.

‘What kind of name is Minna?’ Bianca asks. It sounds almost Nordic to her but she cannot imagine how the girl’s parents – two peasants with red, rugged
faces – came to choose that name from the Litany of the Saints or a list of relatives.

Minna, who has been folding shirts, drops what she is doing, sits down on a stool, crosses her legs, rests her elbows on her knees, and looks Bianca up and down.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘I’m listening,’ Bianca says, brushing her hair.

Minna begins to tell her story. It is clear from the start that it is one she enjoys recounting.

‘Minna is the name that they copied by mistake from the document that the parish issued. They already had a Mirta, Carlo, Battista and Luigina. There was no room for me in the house, and
since I was born at harvest, in May, and Mamma had to go and work in the fields and couldn’t even breastfeed me, they left me at the group home in Milan.’

‘What do you mean?’ Bianca says, putting down the brush and facing the girl. It seems the story will indeed be long and complicated.

‘The group home was where they brought us abandoned babies,’ Minna explains.

‘An orphanage,’ says Bianca, convinced now of having understood.

‘Oh, no, Miss Bianca.’ Minna laughs, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘I had a mamma and a papa, I told you. I still have them. Not only orphans get abandoned, you know. Poor
children are abandoned too. Sometimes just temporarily. They came back for me when I was five.’

‘And until then you lived in the institution?’

Minna raises her eyebrows. ‘Institution?’

‘Yes, the place where they keep abandoned children – the home, as you call it.’ She has seen one in Paris. It was a big building, white and elegant. Her father told her about
this custom of entrusting newborns to the public institution so that they could grow strong and educated, as was their right.

‘Oh, no, Miss Bianca, you don’t understand,’ Minna says. ‘In this place in Milan, there’s a kind of big wooden drawer that slides in and out of the front door.
Babies are placed in it and they are pushed through into the building. But the babies don’t stay there. They only remain when they’re newborns. They are taken in, inspected to make sure
that they’re healthy, and then given to a wet nurse in some village. The real parents provide clothes, a blanket and some money now and then if they can. The new families are either farmers,
they herd geese or they work in the fields. They take good care of the babies. Every so often someone goes to check on them. If a baby dies, the money stops coming and it’s all over. When the
mothers and fathers – the real ones – want their babies back, they go and get them. If they want them. If and when they can afford them. They came to get me when I was five,’ she
says again, proudly. ‘But my name was wrong. My document said Erminia but either the priest was old and deaf, or the man who copied the name into the book wrote it wrong, or the priest read
my name wrong to the people of Cusago who took me in, because he said Arminna, or something that wasn’t even a Christian name, so they had to give me the name of a normal saint. Anyway, they
changed Arminna to Minna. When I finally came home, the name stuck. Now I’m used to it. It’s like dogs and cats: if you start calling them something else, they don’t
understand.’

So that is Minna’s story, Bianca thinks. Not at all Nordic. Bianca wonders if Minna has any memories from those five years she spent with strangers; if they cared for her well; if they
treated her like their own child or like a servant. Maybe she won’t be able to answer. Probably she has forgotten everything; or perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about it. Bianca looks
at her with newfound respect. That little girl with the face of a kitten has dealt with her own trials and tribulations, and yet, here she is, alive and whole. That is not insignificant. That is
the stolid force of one who takes life as it is, because nothing can be done about it.

Bianca turns to the mirror and looks at Minna’s face in the reflection behind her. ‘Would you like to finish my hair?’ She sees the child smile from ear to ear. Minna is
finally being considered more than just a maid – a lady in waiting. Bianca doesn’t mind if Minna pulls her hair; it is only because she is excited. It is all right if she doesn’t
fix the tiny bone pins tightly enough in her bun, even if it means she can hardly move her head throughout dinner. Later Bianca sees Minna’s reflection again in the mirror in the dining room,
when she peeks in to check on the public effect of her hairdressing.

No one notices her hair except Tommaso, who hurries to sit next to Bianca after dinner.

‘You have the neck of a nymph,’ he whispers while others are chatting amongst themselves.

Bianca frowns. She doesn’t know how to take compliments. She has never learned, never having had the time or the occasion to do so. Instead of blushing or looking down, as is customary,
she stares at him fiercely.
What nerve
. Her neck flares with anger. She feels it transforming into a scarlet map of an archipelago, and she places her hand to her throat and coughs.

‘Have you caught a cold, Miss Bianca? You ought to take care of yourself and wear a scarf,’ Donna Clara says, unwittingly dissipating all embarrassment with her prickly
thoughtfulness.

Tommaso turns away, resting his elbow on the table and leaning his chin in his hand. He changes the topic.

‘Titta,’ he says, ‘if it’s no burden, I’d like to talk with you about something that is dear to my heart . . .’

The two men get up, bow and take their leave. Bianca’s flush of colour slowly fades under Innes’s severe gaze.

Perhaps encouraged by a new sense of trust – and not quite ready to accept that what has occurred between them is a one-off – Minna never leaves Bianca’s side
even though she doesn’t need an assistant and has already told her so. But Donna Clara thinks a domestic painter should have an assistant and Bianca fears that by turning Minna down she will
offend the older lady. So, in addition to letting her care for her hair, Bianca allows Minna to carry her paintbox and easel. And when the drawing session is over, she lets the girl clean her
brushes, but always under close observation for those little hands can also be rough. Minna follows her wherever she goes, as loyal as a puppy, curious to the point of appearing insolent. She is a
domestic servant who has barely been domesticated herself. Initially, Bianca suspects that Minna follows her so that she can watch her paint and tell the others about it later. But then she
understands the loyalty of servitude.

‘I don’t tell people about our conversations. I swear to you, may I die as a spy,’ Minna tells her, crossing her fingers in an X and kissing them.

‘Cross my heart, hope to die,’ Bianca says, in English.

‘What?’ Minna asks.